Ask HN: Which parental action increased your happiness and success as an adult?
Which specific action or decision did your parents make that most positively influenced your quality of life as an adult?
My parents were theologians and both grew up as missionaries kids in incredibly dangerous, remote, environments, the best thing they did was teach us to think critically and parse communication (especially persuasive communication) and complex ideas. They used the tools of hermeneutics, theology and philosophy to do this, they also exposed us to living philosophers and their writings and the fields many journals.
They became heavily involved in education, literacy and higher learning and their plans to go overseas for mission work were dropped.
Every week on the way home from from the different churches we went to they would ask us what the pastors had preached incorrectly, what assertions they had made that were not defensible with the text they had used. There was very occasionally nothing said incorrect but there was usually A LOT of indefensible and even contradictory teaching. Much of it was teaching dominant local cultural positions unsupported by or antithetical to the text.
My siblings went into successful careers in scientific research, law, tech and leadership roles.
Literacy, critical thinking and the ability to parse complex ideas are invaluable. Having an "objective" text to argue to made things much more approachable as children.
I would love to figure out how to do that with my own kids if I ever have them, I won't be taking them to church so I'm not sure how to replicate the same environment.
Edit: The other thing they did was they moved us to a very wealthy area when I was about 13, and even though health catastrophe destroyed my families fortunes and health (before taking the lives of both my parents while I was barely 20,) our financial proximity to wealth and our willingness to exploit ourselves did give us access to capital opportunities we wouldn't have had in a less affluent area.
The feedback loop of regular and default critical analysis really prepared all of us children for the internet age, a mental firewall inculcated at a young age to analyze instructed belief and media literacy is not a common experience, I did started appreciating it during highschool.
They were also strongly anti shame and strangely were against both non-conformity and conformity. We all ended up being very different people, and different in almost every way from them with but we share their agreeableness, openness to new experience, and tend to the analytical.
OPs parents sound much more interesting than this :)
During one such instance, some people came to our neighbour's house. (Later I learnt they belonged to the coal mafia. And those guys had come to threaten him. In a very gentlemanly mafia style. With guns and all.) We were sitting on our stairs, counting stars and constellations (another one of my father's pastimes those days that got me interested in astronomy) and had a vantage of height to observe the whole thing. My father, for some reason, thought of indulging me. He took me on his lap and told me that when people converse, words don't matter. What matters is their intention. So it's very important to read between the lines. And to factor in the context and their role in it. He went on to explain the various intricacies of that conversation to drive his point.
That day, I lost my innocence.
This began in the 8-bit days when it used the family TV, but even when it had its own display it continued to be in the family room.
That meant even when I was coding, or making documents, web pages, or playing games, it was easy for my parents to take an interest in what I was doing and kept it on the side of being a family/social activity. It also let them keep a healthy balance on the amount of time spent, too.
Second, discussing current events and politics from multiple perspectives/teaching me to exist in spaces with people who disagree with me. My family members are all over the map politically.
Third, consequence based rules. I didn't have a curfew, but I did have provisions that I would have one if I either a.) started missing school/work or b.) didn't arrange my logistics and needed to wake up parents to come drive me home. The rules always had REASONS. (On the other hand, other authority figures weren't fans of this...)
Now as an adult, with my own children, I look back and appreciate that I didn't chase shinny stuff in my formative years. I'm totally ok waiting until the moment is right, but my children don't understand the concept at all.
I will say there was a big negative - teaching that society is a meritocracy and to have integrity. I would be much more successful and happy if they told me how crooked society really is.
As for a specific decision, my mother tells me it was encouraging me to befriend a supervisor who all of my other coworkers hated. This was at a sushi bar. The guy had an inflated ego, put other staff members down, got on everyone's case, and held grudges. So mother tells me I should just do everything the guy wants, and as months go by, there is no one on the team who the supervisor trusts more than me. Even though my performance was average, I was his favorite employee. It got to the point where I was fixing his computer, invited to his home, and doing his math homework for him (he was in culinary school). When I finally moved on to another job, he begged me to stay. Years later he was super friendly to me once when we randomly encountered each other. I think the moral of the whole thing was to not quit just because someone with authority over you has a crap personality.
I have not been formally educated in many things that I know nowadays (the english language is one of them, albeit far from perfect), but knowing how to read from an early age helped me enjoying the activity and knowing how to find information independently.
Not a personal story, but one that I'll remember for my own kids when they grow up.
https://www.businessinsider.com/spanx-founder-sara-blakely-r...
Edit, some other knowledge I read: Richard Branson's father used to repeat: Isn't life wonderful. His mother would put him in front of a mirror and show how it reflects badly on him when he would badmouth other people. (I don't have the exact source on these two, some podcast I listened)
As consequence, I usually that what I feel like, but have no urge to do things because I can; off course I can do them, but I'll do those things I want to do, not because they are (extravagant?) options.
Yeah...I know you can get it here in the states, but having it at home made me really appreciate that simple things can really bring happiness.
I think that partly as a result of this (coupled with the privilege of growing up in a middle-class family with enough resources to live comfortably), I grew up with the default (unconscious) expectation that I'd do something I really enjoyed with my life, for work and otherwise. Not because anyone told me that, but just because nobody said otherwise. While at the same time always expecting to have to put real effort and time into whatever I decided to pursue next.
My mother who was orphaned at a very young age and was raised by her grand mother would tell us about how she would have to erase their books and turn over their school uniforms and restitch them when they got faded when a new school year began because they couldn’t afford new clothes or books. My uncle who was all of 8 months when my grand parents passed away, had to struggle to make his school fees. Yet they have done well simply because of their perseverance and hard work. When I think about it, luck must have played a role but they still worked very hard to make their lives and their kids lives better.
My father would tell me about the time when they couldn’t afford to buy milk for me as a kid. And his cousin who was many years his senior asked him if he had any savings and when they answered in the negative, implored him to start.
These 2 things have always been my guiding lights. Very recently I have started losing interest in everything that is happening around me due to life circumstances. And writing these things has truly helped me understand where I’m from and what I need to do. Thank you OP
My father was really stingy with money and wouldn’t gift me anything. All my friends drove cars in high school. I didn’t feel jealous (rides everywhere!) but it felt good when I earned my first car (and, uh, learned stick shift on the drive home). My mother didn’t spend a lot but never worried about money while working exactly the job she wanted how she wanted (including taking the risk of starting her own business to run her way).
You can guess they had slightly different upbringings. I had a solid middle-class experience growing up, never was spoilt but there wasn’t much I wanted, either. Supported by the privileges of socioeconomic class, between them I got a healthy balance of fiscal responsibility and freedom from letting that dictate my life.
I grew up poor, with uneducated parents who could hardly speak English. My parents depended on me a lot. Growing up poor gave me independence and growth. Resilience learned from struggles. Opportunities to make my own decisions and mistakes. My parents couldn’t tell me what to do or give advice because they just didn’t know how to grow up and be successful in the US. So it was up to me to make my own life decisions. I’m a late bloomer, but I’ve obtained a lot of life lessons along the way.
A way I see to teach kids this lesson without the struggles of being poor is to give them some autonomy and the mental tools to push through their failures.
And a lack of an emphasis on fitting in.
The rest was a counter example of how not to be an adult. I was very strait laced and grew up quickly because raising me was too much for my father. I have severe ADHD and I’m sure my dad does too. Adulting was too hard for him.
So I was extremely motivated to make something of myself as a result. I didn’t have an idea of a specific goal, but I wanted to earn more than $70k salary doing something with computers.
* Don’t spend money you don’t have
Taught me how to be self-reliant.
Showed me the power of compound growth and moderation.